A Quiet Summer in Queenstown

Greetings New Zealand film technicians. Another three months has flown by and I was thinking the title of this segment should be changed to ‘regional warp’, as in time-warp, as in my life is flashing by before my very eyes! Perhaps a side-effect of becoming a parent?

On the work front in the South Island we have had a quiet period, similar to the North. I was just looking through my little black note book to see what projects have happened down in Queenstown and then I realized how funny it is that I still use a note book to write down all my jobs, hours, gear rentals and side projects. I have an iPhone, iMac, cloud storage, digital back ups and numerous tech type systems but I still choose to use my humble notepad and an ink pen to keep track of my working life. It must be an unresolved trust issue that I have with technology. I blame the Terminator movies and possibly The Matrix ones also. Anyway, back to work, yes we had a few jobs pre summer. I think last time I signed off I was talking up a Revolver Films job, it went well, people tumbling down hills through trees on wire rigs caught in imaginary Schweppes bubbles. After that nice big four day TVC with all the trimmings I gripped a few two day Guerrilla style shoots, one for Canon on the cliffs of Walter Peak and the other a Korean job about a new 4K television set. The picture was so ridiculously clear that the wind made every shake or tremble look like an earthquake. It will add another curve ball shooting for full-res 4K when it becomes the new normal.

I finished my year on a Nurofen TVC featuring the day in the life of a helicopter pilot, another two days flying around in the mountains doing cool looking shots of a hard working pilot, a dream job – Merry Christmas to me!

Then Christmas arrived and I took my family north to introduce the youngling to the extended relations and get some city time and some beach time without the 4mm wetsuit needed down here in the lake .

When I arrived back I was greeted by a great big Smirnoff Vodka job brought in by Cherokee Films. It was a flash back to the heady days of the BIG jobs. With HoDs brought in to run the show, we had the venerable Jay Munro come in to key the job and Danny Williams ran the massive lighting show. A techo 30 was trucked in to freak out the extras (all 250 of them) with 30 of them featured and a number of those proper actor types, some I even recognized from Shortys! It was five days of pure awesome!

The rest of our supposedly busy months of summer consisted of a two day Dunlop tracking job in the streets of Dunedin and another few tiny jobs for a few days for a couple of techs, piss-poor summer work-wise. But a brilliant summer for swimming, relaxing and working on your personal projects. I loved it!

Walking with Dinosaurs came back for some pick ups, but the Wellington massive snagged that job, now that The Hobbit is not shooting. I had one of my utes up there for the camera department and apparently it was a great time.

We currently have a reality show shooting in Wanaka, some of the guys from our local lighting team and one of our grips are doing the set up for the staging and lighting sets that they use for the eliminations etc. A few guys will stay on for the whole show.

Our next project for chief grips is Hope and Wire in Christchurch, a Kiwi television drama about the quakes. Myself and Sam Strain are gripping ‘action’ unit for five weeks, another couple of Wellington grips are doing main unit. It will be cool working on a New Zealand story, especially with some old-school heavy hitters on board… including Albol as our DoP.

So back to work now after having time to enjoy summer and my family, precious time in a busy world.

Joshua Dunn, Queenstown branch member